It will be the perfect parting gift for impending retirees Patrick Chan, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford

GANGNEUNG — You could think of it as a gold watch. And it was certainly a gold worth watching.

It will be the perfect parting gift for impending retirees Patrick Chan, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, some glitter for their glide onto the tour circuit.

It was theirs for the taking in figure skating’s team event on Monday after Chan did what Chan can do in the clutch, nailing a couple of quads and skating the heck out of the technical side to win the men’s long program.

“We thought Patrick could come out and win off the bat which would put the whole thing at ease for us, and he did,” said Skate Canada’s high performance director Mike Slipchuk, the man responsible for deciding Team Canada’s makeup for the long and short programs.

Truth is, he had help. Some arm twisting even. The veterans stepped up and said, we got this.

“They were on a mission this year,” said Slipchuk. “This was important and our whole team was full in to win this. When I talked to them in the summer I never had one of them say ‘maybe I’ll just do one part.’ They were all in.”

They led the competition after days one and two, then Chan teed it up on Monday and Gabrielle Daleman walloped it out of the park. Subbed in for Kaetlyn Osmond, Daleman nailed her triple-filled long program to finish third in the women’s event and clinch the gold medal; a relative youngster helping out her elders.

The reigning Canadian champ finished behind Alina Zagitova but Canada still held a 63-58 lead over the Olympic Athletes from Russia, with only the dancers to come. The top dance team in the long could earn 10 points, the last just six. The most OAR could earn was 68 points, the least Canada could register was 69.

Team Canada celebrates winning gold in the team event.

Team Canada celebrates winning gold in the team event.

Canada had clinched before Virtue and Moir put a blade on the ice for the long dance. Daleman’s teammates mobbed her after the impeccably clean skate; told her what an incredible job she had done for them.

“That was so great to hear from my team,” she said. “We are such an incredible, strong team. I really am glad with what we’ve done. We have definitely made Canada proud.”

She and Osmond both finished third in their respective skates, while the veterans in the other disciplines went the distance: Virtue and Moir with two wins, Duhamel and Radford with a win and a second place finish, Chan with a third and a win.

“We’re proud of ourselves in that we’ve talked about this since Sochi,” said Moir. “We weren’t happy with our approach in Sochi and we wanted to change that. I think that was on the athletes’ shoulders.”

There was no indication from Chan that it felt like a burden on Monday. He stepped up to lead the way home with a clutch, two-quad tour de force, keeping Canada in the catbird seat. He wasn’t perfect — those pesky triple Axels that have been his nemesis reared their ugliest heads again — but he improvised some combos through the back half of the program, and Hallelujah, there he was on top with a season-best score of 179.75.

Most importantly, he bumped Olympic Athlete from Russia Mikhail Kolyada into second spot.

“I will say that Patrick proved something to himself today,” Moir said. “I don’t want to rub it in everyone’s face but I called that yesterday.”

Chan proved that his long program can put him in the conversation in his individual event here; with two caveats. He needs two clean quads in the long and he can’t bomb the short, which means he absolutely must get that triple Axel to behave.

“I think I’ve been in the conversation for awhile,” he said. “I’m there always. The one common denominator is the triple Axel. I’ll be honest, it’s been a challenge for me my entire life. Looking back at when I grew up, maybe it was the wrong technique I just grew up with, or the body type I have.

Canada’s Gabrielle Daleman reacts after competing in the Team Event.

“But I’m so determined to really, really achieve this last kind of challenge and smoke a great triple Axel at the Olympics.”

Chan was asked if a gold in the team event feels less of an accomplishment for a three-time world champ who never made it to the top of the podium in an individual event at the Games. He gave a heartfelt, team-guy, Canadian, we-are-in-this-together answer. And good for him.

“At the end of the day a medal is a medal. I’m going to hold this medal tight to me and it’s going to be as good as the individual. I’m sorry, that’s how I’m going to see it, how I’m going to enjoy it, and that’s for me to decide. I worked really hard for this. We all worked really hard. We are a very tight-knit group here in Canada as figure skaters and to me that means more than winning a medal in individuals. We can now embrace each other and know that we collectively did something amazing.”

Canada’s Patrick Chan and teammates react to his results in the kiss and Cry after his skate.

He didn’t know what colour that medal was going to be at that time. But gold was a pretty good bet, and gold it was. And this Canadian team is full value for it.

Chan came back from retirement for this, so did Virtue and Moir. They got the band back together and decided that the team event was worth their commitment. That’s why the only substitution for Canada was Daleman in for Osmond.

“We felt we owed it to them to do it,” Slipchuk said of the vets who went wire-to-wire, “and every one of them contributed to this win, which is fabulous.”

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